Award-winning actress, producer, director, and filmmaker Mariska Hargitay will take center stage as host of the 78th Emmy Awards on September 14. Best known for her decades-long role as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Hargitay has become one of television’s most enduring stars, earning an Emmy and a Golden Globe along the way. But long before she became one of television’s most recognizable stars, Hargitay was the daughter of a Hollywood icon.
Her mother, Jayne Mansfield, was one of the most famous women of the 1950s and ’60s, a Hollywood bombshell whose movies, publicity stunts, and larger-than-life persona made her a household name. Behind that carefully crafted image, however, was a woman whose remarkable life would come to a sudden and tragic end when Hargitay was still a young child.
What was Jayne Mansfield famous for?
Jayne Mansfield became a 1950s pop-culture icon and sex symbol by combining platinum-blonde glamour, sharp comedic timing, and the occasional publicity stunt.
Born Vera Jane Palmer in Texas, Mansfield landed her first major break on Broadway in 1955, playing dumb-blonde star Rita Marlowe in the comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Hollywood soon began promoting her as a rival to Marilyn Monroe, and her breakout film, The Girl Can’t Help It, helped turn her into a star. She won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1957 and landed a major contract with 20th Century Fox, leading to a string of roles that cemented her “blonde bombshell” persona.
Everett Collection
But Mansfield was far more than the “dumb blonde” image she played on screen. She was musically trained and reportedly had a high IQ, a contrast that became part of her public image. In 1956, Life magazine even featured her on its cover under the headline “Broadway’s Smartest Dumb Blonde.”
Mansfield continued building her Hollywood career with roles in The Wayward Bus, The Burglar, and the film adaptation of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957, followed by It Takes a Thief in 1960 and The George Raft Story in 1961.
She also became a familiar presence on television, making multiple appearances on The Red Skelton Hour and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. She even got the chance to play the violin and piano on The Ed Sullivan Show.
In 1960, Mansfield received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
How did Jayne Mansfield die?
Jayne Mansfield died instantly at age 34 in a horrifying car crash on June 29, 1967.
Mansfield had been on her way to New Orleans from Biloxi, Mississippi, where she had been performing at a local nightclub. Traveling with her were her driver, Ronald B. Harrison, her lawyer and companion, Samuel S. Brody, and three of her children with ex-husband Mickey Hargitay: 8-year-old Mickey, 6-year-old Zoltan, and 3-year-old Mariska.
On U.S. Route 90 near New Orleans, the car slammed into the back of a tractor-trailer that was obscured by a thick cloud of fog from a mosquito-spraying truck.
Mansfield, Brody, and Harrison were killed instantly. Her three children, who had been sleeping in the back seat, survived the crash.
How did Mariska Hargitay honor her mother?
Mariska Hargitay’s world was rocked again when she learned that Mickey Hargitay wasn’t her biological father. That revelation — and the weight of the family secrets she had carried for years — eventually pushed Mariska to explore who Mansfield really was beyond the platinum-blonde bombshell persona, the heels, the makeup, and the breathy, stylized voice.
The result was her HBO documentary My Mom Jayne, which allowed Mariska to separate the public image of Jayne Mansfield from the woman she knew only briefly as her mother. In the process, Hargitay said the film gave her a sense of agency over years of complicated feelings surrounding her mother, her childhood, and the secrets her family had kept.
Mariska told extratv, “I was told that she was a different person behind that voice, and that’s what I wanted to get to know … and I did.”
As a result, Hargitay won two Emmys for her deeply personal documentary My Mom Jayne at the Creative Arts Emmys: One for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and another for Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026, Monday, September 14, 8/7c, NBC and Peacock